What is An Ethical Issue?
What is An Ethical Issue? An ethical issue is any issue that involves ethics. Euthanasia and abortion are two ethical issues. Ethical issues are based on personal opinion.http://answers.ask.com/Society/Philosophy/what_is_an_ethical_issue Ethical issues Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research Values and Ethics: Guidance for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research is designed to provide guidance to researchers, Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific HRECs or subcommittees on the conception, design and conduct of research. 'Ethical issues in technology' The advent of technology has raised a host of legal and ethical issues that are unique to the 21st century. From personal privacy online, to the appropriate uses of new technology, to copyright and intellectual property on the Internet, the legal and ethical issues in technology are multifaceted and complex. Because of the ever-evolving nature of technology, new ethical and legal considerations are constantly arising to challenge ethicists and legal professionals alike. Ethical, Societal, and Global Issues in Information Systems' The Domain of Ethics' Information technology is a powerful tool that can be used to further organizational goals, pursue national interest, or support environmentally sustainable development. The same technology has also made it easier to engage in ethical or unethical business practices electronically anywhere in the world. The way the technology is deployed in organizations depends on our decisions as managers, computing professionals, and users of information systems. All of us therefore, should make these decisions guided not only by the organizational and technological aspects of information systems, but also in consideration of their effects on individuals. Ethics and Codes of Ethics Instructors can begin this chapter by asking students the questions posed in this section of the chapter? 1. How do ethical issues relate to legal ones? 2. Is an ethical breach punishable by law? 3. If there is no law that penalizes a certain conduct, does it mean that you are always right behaving in that way? Ethics is a study of the principles of right and wrong that ought to guide human conduct. Human behaviour and decision making fall into three domains of: 1. Legal issues 2. Ethical issues 3. Discretionary domain As we develop and use information systems to solve organizational problems or to respond to opportunities, we need to make sure that our solutions is proper with respect to each of these domains. Legal Domain - governs a variety of relatively well-described behaviours, specified by law and enforceable in the courts of a given country or within a local jurisdiction. Ethical Issues - is governed by the general norms of behaviour and by specific codes of ethics. Ethical considerations go beyond legal liability. ''Sunshine principle: To see whether your decision making in a given case involves an ethical issue, apply the Asunshine principle@: What if I read about my decisions and subsequent actions in tomorrow's paper? '''Discretionary Domain - only if the action is both legal and ethical falls into this domain, where we act properly entirely according to our preferences. In this domain, we can apply such criteria as organizational desirability or cost-benefit analysis. Knowledge of ethics as it applies to the issues arising from the development and use of information systems helps us make decisions in our professional life. Professional knowledge is generally assumed to confer a special responsibility within its domain. This is why the professions have evolved '''''codes of ethics, that is, sets of principles intended to guide the conduct of the members of the profession. The principal codes of ethics for information systems professionals are the: 1. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct 2. The Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct adopted by DPMA. These codes of ethics provide guidelines for ethical conduct in the development and use of information technology. End users and IS professionals would live up to their ethical responsibilities by voluntarily following such guidelines. For example, you can be a responsible end user by: 1. Acting with integrity 2. increasing your professional competence 3. Setting high standards of personal performance 4. Accepting responsibility for your work 5. Advancing the health, privacy, and general welfare of the public Ethical Theories Ethical theories give us the foundation from which we can determine what course of action to take when an ethical issue is involved. At the source of ethics lies the idea of reciprocity. There are two fundamental approaches to ethical reasoning: 1. Consequentialist theories - tells us to choose the action with the best possible consequences. Thus, the utilitarian theory that represents this approach holds that our chosen action should produce the greatest overall good for the greatest number of people affected by our decision. This approach is often difficult to apply, since it is not easy to decide what the Agood@ is and how to measure and compare the resulting Agoods@. 2. Obligational (deontological) theories - argues that it is our duty to do what is right. Your actions should be such that they could serve as a model of behaviour for others - and, in particular, you should act as you would want others to act toward you. Our fundamental duty is to treat others with respect, and thus not to treat them solely as a means to our own purposes. Treating others with respect, means not violating their rights. The principal individual rights are: 1. The right to life and safety 2. The right of free consent 3. The right to privacy 4. The right to private property 5. The right of free speech 6. The right of fair treatment 7. The right to due process 17.2 Scenarios in the Ethical Domain This section describes three small minicases. Give the students a few minutes to read these issues. Spend a few minutes in open discussion with the students on how they would react to the given situation. 17.3 Ethical Issue in the Development and Use of Information Systems '''17.3 The welfare of individuals and their specific rights, need to be safeguarded in the environment of an information society. The principal ethical issues of concern with regard to information systems have been identified as the issues of: 1. Privacy 2. Accuracy 3. Property 4. Access Tracing an ethical issue to its source and the understanding of which individual rights could be violated helps understand the issue. '''17.4 Privacy Privacy is the right of individuals to retain certain information about themselves without disclosure and to have any information collected about them with their consent protected against unauthorized access. Invasion of privacy is a potent threat in an information society. Individuals can be deprived of opportunities to form desired professional and personal relationships, or can even be politically neutralized through surveillance and gathering of data from the myriad databases that provide information about them. The Privacy Act serves as a guideline for a number of ethics codes adopted by various organizations. The Act specifies the limitations on the data records that can be kept about individuals. The following are the principal privacy safeguards specified: 1. No secret records should be maintained about individuals 2. No use can be made of the records for other than the original purposes without the individuals consent. 3. The individual has the right of inspection and correction of records pertaining to him or her. 4. The collecting agency is responsible for the integrity of the record-keeping system The power of information technology to store and retrieve information can have a negative effect on the right to privacy of every individual. Computers and related technologies enable the creation of massive databases containing minute details of our lives which can be assembled at a reasonable cost and can be made accessible anywhere and at any time over telecommunications network throughout the world. Two database phenomena create specific dangers. Database matching - makes it possible to merge separate facts collected about an individual in several databases. If minute facts about a person are put together in this fashion in a context unrelated to the purpose of the data collection and without the individual's consent or ability to rectify inaccuracies, serious damage to the rights of the individual may result. ''Statistical databases ''- are databases that contain large numbers of personal records, but are intended to supply only statistical information. A snooper, however, may deduce personal information by constructing and asking a series of statistical queries that would gradually narrow the field down to a specific individual. Legislation and enforcement in the area of privacy in the United States are behind those in a number of other countries. The countries of the European Union offer particularly extensive legal safeguards of privacy. In the environment of business globalization, this creates difficulties in the area of transborder data flow, or transfer of data across national boundaries. Countries with more stringent measures for privacy protection object to a transfer of personal data into the states where this protection in more lax. The United Nations has stated the minimum privacy guarantees recommended for incorporation into national legislation. Privacy protection relies on the technical security measures and other controls that limit access to databases and other information stored in computer memories or transmitted over the telecommunication networks.